Stunning news from the legislature - the management committee of politicians that pretends to
run the joint has issued a public notice about a meeting.
That's the equivalent of an old-style Kremlin commissariat holding a public hearing.
Even more shocking, there are brave statements indicating they are actually going to try to do something at today's session, rather than just convene for a few minutes, rubberstamp whatever's in front of them and then wander back to their caucuses.
And yet another jaw-dropper: "Following this meeting, the committee will issue a public statement, including a full schedule of meetings and a work plan to expedite action on audit concerns."
That's right, a "public statement." And a "work plan."
Glasnost at last!
Those two phrases have never ever been associated with the legislative assembly management committee. It's a measure of how hard auditor general John Doyle's report on the shoddy accounting hit.
Doyle eviscerated the legislative assembly for its inept accounting procedures last week. And the reaction from inside the building has been instructive. First, there was fudging.
Speaker Bill Barisoff's first response after the report was finally made public was to minimize the impact. "We've been working with the auditor general for some time," he said. "It came down to accounting procedures."
But the reason they have been "working with" him for some time is because the legislature officers have been stonewalling his first recommendation from five long years ago to clean up their accounting act.
He wrote three advisories over a period of years warning them changes were needed and they either ignored or argued each point. Either way, nothing was done. That forced Doyle to land on them with both feet, which he did in the full audit.
He said also that it's the financial management of the legislature that's at issue, not just a dispute over methods.
Barisoff tried to retroactively demonstrate openness by saying a couple of times over the course of an interview with reporters that it was the legislature that invited Doyle in to conduct the audit.
"We invited the auditor general in -. The auditor general was asked by myself and LAMC to come in and make sure was nothing there that was of a fraudulent nature."
Doyle made it clear that is nonsense. He conducted the audit because the legislature did nothing about his first recommendation from five years ago. And he said the two subsequent warnings produced requests for more time and warnings that it would have to go to the management committee, which never happened because the committee seldom meets.
"We're talking years of delay here," he told reporters.
He sent a letter to the Speaker informing him of the need for a full audit, and received a reply from the legislature clerk asking him not to do one.
They exchanged views and the Speaker eventually conceded he could begin the audit.
Doyle summed it up: "If that means I was invited in - it's not my description."
Doyle also disputed the Speaker's reassurance that no fraud was uncovered, saying the books are so bad he simply can't tell.
There was also a pointed comment on Barisoff's reaction.
"I think the Speaker might not appreciate the gravity of the findings and hasn't yet quite worked out what this means properly and what his responsibilities are," said Doyle.
That was last week. Today's scheduled meeting may provide another lesson.
It's going to be quite a party. Both caucuses will be represented, along with legislature clerk Craig James, the legislative accountant and some of the three independent consultants who have been retained over the past year to deal with the mess.
Developments so far also illustrate how loath MLAs are to criticize the Speaker. Whoever holds the office is mostly anonymous outside the building, but has complete authority inside.
That's why the only calls for his head over this issue are coming from the B.C. Conservatives, who don't have any seats and aren't particularly afraid of him.
The other thing that works against his ouster is that there's lots of blame to go around. Both caucuses have been sending representatives to the LAMC for years to do nothing. So it's not just the Speaker at fault. They're all in it together.
